What ails you that you grumble thus and groan?

Is it because you'd have my cunt alone?

Why take it all, lo, have it every bit;

Peter! Beshrew you but you're fond of it!

For if I would go peddle my belle chose,

I could walk out as fresh as is a rose;

But I will keep it for your own sweet tooth.

You are to blame, by God I tell the truth/

"Such were the words I had at my command.
Now will I tell you of my fourth husband.

"My fourth husband, he was a reveller,
That is to say, he kept a paramour;
And young and full of passion then was I,
Stubborn and strong and jolly as a pie.
Well could I dance to tune of harp, nor fail
To sing as well as any nightingale
When I had drunk a good draught of sweet winfc.
Metellius, the foul churl and the swine,
Did with a staff deprive his wife of life
Because she drank wine; had I been his wife
He never should have frightened me from drink;
For after wine, of Venus must I think:
For just as surely as cold produces hail,
A liquorish mouth must have a lickerish tail.
In women wine's no bar of impotence,
This know all lechers by experience.

"But Lord Christ! When I do remember me
Upon my youth and on my jollity,
It tickles me about my heart's deep root.
To this day does my heart sing in salute
That I have had my world in my own time.
But age, alas! that poisons every prime,
Has taken away my beauty and my pith;
Let go, farewell, the devil go therewith!
The flour is gone, there is no more to tell,
The bran, as best I may, must I now sell;
But yet to be right merry 111 try, and
Now will I tell you of my fourth husband,

3*3